Movement of the people: Hungarian folk dance, populism, and citizenship

Although Mary Taylor’s experiences with and documentation of táncház2 serves as the ethnographic center of Movement of the People: Hungarian Folk Dance, Populism, and Citizenship, her work should be understood as a much broader exploration of the intricate and shifting relationships between political, economic, social, and cultural spheres in Hungary. Her study is a diligently researched and sweeping, an expansive interrogation of how cultural forms and practices can be inextricably linked with processes of building a nation-state. Her deep dive exploring this in the Hungarian context is timely given the current political environment there. Indeed, her work seems designed to contextualize present-day circumstances, though not as a simple cause-and-effect scenario, but rather as a nuanced constellation of historical precedents. Among the theoretical lenses she uses for this exploration are concepts of “frameworks of sense”; cultivation and the dichotomies of inner/spiritual and outer/material spheres; collective memory; and associative spaces. Taylor’s book is laid out clearly enough in essentially chronological order. She begins with an introduction called “The Aesthetic Nation,” in which she lays out many of the key concepts that will be explained in greater detail later. For example, much of “The Aesthetic Nation” focuses on Taylor’s concept of “civil society”, which she defines as “a space of association between the family and the state while also using the term as a heuristic for the ‘decisive locus of operation of modern power’ [reference from anthropologist David Scott].” (8) She introduces notions of cultivation, citizenship, and nationalism, as well as brief intellectual overviews of these concepts. She also states her research context, indicating that she is not examining táncház as a movement, as many other scholars have done, but rather as “an element in a process of state formation spanning distinguishable political economic regimes.” (15) Chapter One is a necessary starting point to explore the early, shifting senses of national identity and tools of identity formation in Hungary, from the sentiment of “national awakening” before the 1848 revolution to the early Horthy years in the early 1930s. Taylor demonstrates that the drastic economic and political changes during this time were accompanied by a cultural and institutional framework that served to bolster Hungarianness in a symbolic way early on, but then later by the systematic and scientific tools with which to explore questions of national identity, particularly with the emerging discipline of ethnography and with the early revival ethos

Mary Taylor's Movement of the People: Hungarian Folk Dance, Populism, and Citizenship offers an exciting and expansive look at one of the most powerful folk revivals of the last century and its enduring influence not just as a revival movement, but as affective practice with the power to shape collective action and citizenship. The Hungarian Táncház, or 'Dance House', Movement is now several generations on and continues to thrive, shaping Hungarian culture at home and abroad. The book presents a detailed historical and political analysis, combined with an ethnochoreographic and ethnomusicological approach offering a unique perspective from which to consider both folk arts and rising populism. Taylor successfully penetrates the double world of the táncház which often seems to have a foyer visible to outsiders, and interior rooms populated and rather jealously guarded by insiders. This work is a fascinating dive into the vast world of traditional music and dance culture aimed at a deeper understanding of how the practices, politics, and promises of népi (Hungarian-folk) culture have shaped notions of populism and citizenship. It asks us to look deeper at the recent rise of ethnonational politics in Hungary over time and from the moving body out.
Taylor's work is a significant contribution to the field appealing to a wide audience. It will be of interest to ethnomusicologists, ethnochoreologists, and folklorists as well as Hungarian culture scholars. It also offers a substantial source for those interested in the political history of Central Europe. This 'complex and astute' analysis is a critical addition to an already extensive cannon of work on Hungarian folk culture, relatively little of which is available to non-Hungarian speakers. Hungarian dance houses and the Táncház Movement have long held the fascination of foreign scholars and folk artists for whom this is a must read, but the book also gains a place in the historical and political literature of this part of Central Europe. The work takes seriously the intertwinement of folk identities and popular politics addressing the ethnonational populism that has captured the spotlight of international news under Viktor Orban. Spanning over a century, Taylor places folk dance and music in conversation with discourses and institutions that shape citizenship demonstrating how populist politics through folk culture have been a powerful voice in the development of Hungary and Hungarian identities. Taylor frames Táncház as more than a folk revival. Táncház, enacted critically in and through moving bodies and sensory spaces, is implicated in 'the cultivation of ethnonational sensibilities in a post socialist/neoliberalizing context in which culture talk is ubiquitous' (247). In understanding it as a generative agent of political personhood, Táncház emerges as both a movement and associational form which generates an alternative framework of sense and collective action.
Movement of the People is 'complex and astute'. It successfully ties together a large body of literature and events often taken as separate domains. The writing is clear, and well documented, written at an advanced level and drawing upon a large number of sources. In just seven chapters, Taylor covers almost two centuries of history carefully tracing a path through the complex and, at times, chaotic development of the modern Hungarian nation skilfully using the lens of traditional folk mediums. She passionately and compassionately engages with the ambiguous and complex significance of the Táncház Movement allowing for a historical locatedness that both challenges and examines the kind of timeless purity often associated with folk culture especially in this region. Taylor offers a look at how such notions gain authority and agency making Táncház a force in developing Hungarian identity and populist politics. Telescoping between institutions and individuals, Taylor illuminates a diversity and nuance across spectrums of political and personal belief among the dancers and musicians she encountered that speaks to hegemonic constructions of popular authority. The book is organised chronologically guiding readers on an extensive journey through a long trajectory of dynamic history and skilfully demonstrating how the thread of Táncház is entangled with broader histories of folk and folk movements as elements in nation-state formation.
In the first chapters, Taylor sets up her argument that state formation and aesthetic cultivation of citizens are powerfully entwined in Hungary and are well illustrated by the Táncház movement. She skilfully draws out elements of language, territory, and demographics key to the development of a national consciousness throughout Central Europe in the latter part of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Taylor illuminates events leading up to WWI and the Trianon Agreement which has become a touchstone for Hungarian identity and subsequent folk movements including sentiments today. Urging us to consider Hungary as 'an aesthetic nation', Taylor asks us to consider how 'Hungarian' landscapes, sensibilities, and bodily practices, encapsulated by the dancehouse revival movement arising in the 1970s as part of a history of folk revivals, work to produce and reproduce the 'ethical politics of citizenship' through a foregrounding of aesthetic sensibilities (51).
Exploring the interwar years in chapter two, we begin to see how the rise of populist movements in Hungary is overtly and consciously tied to folk dance and music as well as the growing split between rural and urban. Here, Taylor ties together personal and institutional notions of the népi (or Hungarian folk). Understood broadly among Hungarians as a 'golden' period for national folk culture, Taylor's detailed tracing of state involvement in popular tradition at this time is particularly valuable. Next, Chapter 3 engages the socialist period and the emergence of táncházok (dance houses), focusing on formal institutions such as the web of culture houses and professional 'state' ensembles which continue to be the backbone of dance and music today, combined with an extensive and effective system of education, performance, and preservation. Taylor's elaboration of how ideas of 'the hearth' were cultivated through folk practices and symbols is especially illuminating.
Chapters 4 and 5 represent a shift to more ethnographic writing taking as a focus emergence of the Táncház folk revival and subsequent dancehouse practices. Taylor employs a variety of exemplary experiences and interactions within some of the many dance house events, dance camps, and training events to demonstrate how embodied folk ideology is constructed in terms of a 'mother tongue' drawing out how such notions build a sense of primordial ownership and a right to belonging through folk practices. These include dance and music, but also language, food, crafts, gender, and etiquette. As a dancer, ethnographer, and longtime participant in this world, these sections I found very intriguing if a little limited. While politics are an ever-present force in the táncházok (dance houses) and nape community, overt connections to populism and nation building are rarely made visible. Here, Taylor's work is invaluable, exploring at least some ideas that might be difficult for those more politically and situationally embedded in the Táncház communities. However, Taylor's perspective persists in feeling like that of an outsider, possibly one engaging with particular enclaves of this vast and diverse community. While understanding this is very often the form of entrée to this community, one feels there might be more to the story that is not included in this account. That said, I really enjoyed these moments when Taylor takes us inside the dance houses exploring the ways in which participatory practices shape institutional, community, and personal notions of Hungarianness and belonging. Her attention to bodily and affective practices is exciting, but I am left wanting more detailed ethnography and ethnographic description about táncház events themselves. The bodies corporeal -fleshy, feeling, embodiedsomewhat disappear in Taylor's account which can, at times, flatten out her experiences of other complexities such as gender, age, and etiquette. The dancers and musicians are figured as a cultural 'site' in which power and discourses of populism, culture, identity, and citizenship play out. These living events come across as a little twodimensional. The sights, tastes, smells, sounds, and textures of the dance house experiences feel absent particularly when it comes to the dance and movement. Dance and music, the essence and flavour of the dancehouse and related events take a backseat outside of these chapters and the movement of táncházok is subsumed as an analytical tool for the Táncház Movement.
Chapter 6 returns our focus to the political but with an eye towards community sensemaking that demonstrates how 'táncház interaction with the political sphere become visible' (181). This chapter is powerful in understanding how folk as well as political and legal elements work as enabling drivers in political action especially with Transylvania and the special relationship that this region holds today for Hungarian identity. The final chapters return to a broader focus examining the ways in which 'culture talk' functions in contemporary elections and a growing sense of populism in recent years. The rise of Viktor Orban and recent prominence of the far-right political party Jobbik is the focus of final chapters. Taylor ends by pointing to many questions that remain ongoing as dancehouses and the Táncház Movement continues as a living force in Hungary and Hungarian communities beyond her official borders. Taylor's attention to the revitalisation of ideas and practices surrounding népi movements is a compelling harbinger to events that have come after Taylor's account.
Throughout, Taylor critically understands Táncház as a 'community of sense' always contingent and shifting, yet located by shifting historical, political forces and material conditions that have shaped it. She maintains, 'Neither táncház nor the rise of contemporary Hungarian ethnonational politics can be understood if treated simply as local phenomena' (248). Locating what is often of localised interest to practitioners and folk scholars at the epicentre of globalising ideas about culture formation and its relation to supranational organisations operating within the capitalist world system illuminates the powerful, yet often overlooked, role such movements play. Perhaps most impactfully Taylor's discussion forces disruption of any neat lines drawn between the ethnonationalist postures and policies of Orban's government and the Hungarian people essentialised by racism and authoritarianism. Instead, she asks how hegemony is forged at specific historical conjunctures examining the cultivation of ethnonational political selfhood in relation to the enduring concept of the people/folk that continues to be played out in the bodies of dancers and musicians. Regretfully, both Taylor's time in Hungary and the book end at a critical point in the story leaving us feeling like we have finished the first volume and are eagerly looking for the second. Perhaps this speaks to the compelling nature of her writing and the need for more work of this kind.

Andrea Conger
Departments of Sociology and Anthropology, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Dance, Saint Olaf College conger@stolaf.edu © 2022 Andrea Conger https://doi.org/10. 1080/17411912.2022.2093016 The art of appreciation: music and middlebrow culture in modern Britain, by Kate Guthrie, Oakland, University of California, California Studies in 20th-Century Music, 2021, 293 pp., £54 (hardback), ISBN 9780520351677 What is middlebrow culture? Let us take Pierre Bourdieu's answer: it is probably the best known. In La Distinction: Critique sociale du jugement (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1979), he argues that listeners who favour middlebrow works are ill at ease with the aesthetic disposition demanded by more legitimate repertory. In capitalist societies of the mid-twentieth century, a hierarchy of aesthetic legitimacy is keyed to a pyramid-shaped structure of cultural competencies. At its apex sits the ability to enjoy complex works of instrumental music as autonomous formal structures. The social distinction of this aesthetic disposition is measured by its scarcity. It is a complex skill, imparted more in the families of the privileged than in educational institutions. Granted legitimacy by these institutions, however, the elevation of 'the music itself' exerts considerable social power. Among the petite bourgeoisie, in particular, there is a strong desire to possess the cultural capital that the rituals of autonomy make manifest. For social reasons, such listeners lack confidence, so their desire needs to be facilitated: first, by middlebrow works, which are either legitimate compositions that have been popularised, or those that do not insist on a strong separation of art and world; and second, by more explicit mediation, pedagogic in character, designed to bridge this separation. Access is thus granted, but at a price. To rely for understanding on emotional self-identification with music, or on its verbal mediation, is to mark yourself as inferior in the eyes of the bourgeois aesthete. The petit bourgeois may sit in the concert hall, yet social hierarchy is maintained.
Why go over this basic ground? Surely Kate Guthrie's new book covers it in detail? To an extent, it does. As the title suggests, the focus is less on middlebrow repertory than on cultural pedagogy: the kind of teaching that preserves distinction even as it threatens to undermine it. But here's the rub: Guthrie's text has no theory. There is just one mention of 'cultural capital' in the book (p. 211); the name 'Pierre Bourdieu' does not appear. Of course, there is no reason why Bourdieu should be selected as a model. Yet one expects an author to develop some kind of theoretical orientation in a book on such a broad cultural, social and historical theme. To provide none, or rather, to suggest something like an anti-theoretical perspective, reads as a provocation. Doubtless that was not the intention; nevertheless, it calls for a response.
First, though, the positive virtues of Guthrie's text should be outlined: the topic is original and timely. As Guthrie notes, commentary on twentieth-century British music continues to favour a works-based approach (pp. 221-2, n. 26); musicology in general has scorned